Alexander Vvedensky’s star rises again

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Pop quiz: Who called themselves “[Alexander] Vvedensky’s disciples and his
heirs”? Pussy Riot, of course, in the closing statement of their trial in
August 2012. Vvedensky is one of Russia’s most influential modern poets,
though he was not able to publish his work during his lifetime, and died on
a prison train in 1941. Now he is a star of The New York Review of Books’
lovely new Poets series of slim volumes from around the world: other writers
include the Spaniard Miguel Hernández, Pierre Reverdy, who is French, and a
selection of classical Tamil love poems translated by A.